Long, long ago, Teutonic storytellers told tales by the fire. Many of them mention a deity who was a wisdom
seeker, singer, poet, and warrior. Odin
had two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, who daily flew out over the world, observed the
events, and returned to report the news.
The names of his birds meant “thought” and “memory.” Odin cherished these ravens. He knew that the loss of thought would be
terrible, but that the loss of memory would be far worse. Thought is clever and useful, but memory is
essential and indispensable. When
thought is disconnected from memory, the result is the world outside your
window.
Wade Davis is very tuned into the high cost of
forgetfulness. Modern folks have not
only forgotten who we are, and where we are from, but we are busy erasing the
surviving remnants of much ancient knowledge. There are about 7,000 languages in the world
today, and half are approaching extinction.
When we wander amidst an endless herd of loud and smelly
consumers, it’s easy to forget that our worldview is just one of many. Our culture is a freak in human history,
because of its blitzkrieg on future generations of all species. Most perceive this to be perfectly normal;
it’s all they know. In his book, The Wayfinders,
Davis takes us on a fascinating tour, visiting lucky people who have not been
cut loose from their past.
We have been trained to perceive other cultures as inferior
and primitive. When the British washed
up on the shore of Australia, they failed to recognize and respect the
incredible genius of the Aborigines. Through
tens of thousands of years of trial and error, the natives learned how to live
in balance with a damaged ecosystem that was hot, dry, and lean. The white colonists have attempted to
transplant a European way of life, which is starkly inappropriate, and can only
exist temporarily.
The Aborigines have a network of travel routes that were sung
into existence by the ancestors. The
songs describe the landmarks that travelers will find along the route. If you know the song, you know the
route. Songs are maps. The routes are called songlines. The entire continent is spiritually alive,
and the people have a remarkable awareness of place, and a profound reverence
for it.
The Polynesian culture is found on thousands of islands
scattered across a vast region of the Pacific.
The Spanish first encountered them in 1595, when they arrived in the
Marquesas, a society of 300,000 people.
Within a month, eighty-five percent of the people died from European
diseases. For some reason, the islanders
thought that the visitors were demons.
Polynesians were highly skilled at sea travel. They built excellent catamarans, using Stone
Age technology, that were fifty percent faster than the floating monstrosities
from Spain. Even with their state of the
art sextants and charts, Europeans remained primitive navigators who got
nervous when they drifted beyond sight of land.
Davis went on a voyage with Polynesians who remembered the
ancient knowledge. The navigators always
knew exactly where they were. They paid careful
attention to the wind, clouds, stars, wave patterns, sky colors. They noted the water’s salinity, phosphorescence,
plant debris, and temperature. Sharks,
dolphins, porpoises, and birds provided information. For example, white terns indicated land
within 200 kilometers (124 mi.), and boobies stayed within 40 kilometers (25
mi.) of land.
On the Sahara, the people who understand the desert do not
get lost. They can read the winds, the
texture of the sand, and the forms of the dunes. They can smell water. In Canada, the vast province of Nunavut is
home to the Inuit people. They were
geniuses for surviving in a harsh climate with Stone Age technology. Travelling by dogsled in the long months of
darkness, they never got lost, because they were experts at reading the snow.
These older cultures learned how to adapt to their
ecosystems, because this encouraged stability and survival. They were blessed to inhabit ecosystems that did
not provide ideal conditions for the birth of industrial nightmares. Unfortunately, they have been
“discovered.” They now live in the
shadow of spooky people from industrial nightmares. Many natives have been absorbed into the
consumer monoculture, and have lost their identity.
All species routinely produce mutations. The mutants that can smoothly blend into the
ecosystem, and live in balance with it, have a decent chance at continuing in
the dance of evolution. Disruptive
mutants eventually end up on the bus to Extinctionville.
Experts now believe that the San people of the Kalahari may
be the oldest culture on Earth. As
humankind migrated out of Mother Africa, folks found themselves in ecosystems
quite different from their tropical place of origin. Different regions inspired different cultural
mutations.
Social Darwinists typically imagine a hierarchy of cultures,
with industrial civilization at the gleaming pinnacle. Every student in our culture has this dodgy
notion repeatedly pounded into his or her brain. It is a sacred myth that is commonly mistaken
for truth. Colonists felt a religious
obligation to illuminate primitive people, invite them into the wondrous world
of wage slavery, and provide them with brassieres and Bibles.
Well, Big Mama Nature is in a rather furious mood these days,
and she’s in the process of pounding an unforgettable lesson into our cheesy
civilized brains. It’s called reality —
reaping what you sow. Our culture is a
psychopathic mutant, an immaculate failure.
We could not be farther from the pinnacle of successful adaptation, or
closer to the tar pits of Extinctionville (can you smell the methane?).
Davis takes us on many intriguing side trips. In remote regions of the Sierra Nevada de
Santa Marta we find cultures that escaped from the colonial invaders, and have
not been severed from their roots. They
call themselves the Older Brothers, the guardians of the world. We are the immature Younger Brothers, the zombie-like
demolition crew. They are sure that the
Younger Brothers will eventually wake up — when Big Mama Nature pulls the rug
out from under us. They invite us to
join them, and live with respect for life.
Our culture has created a monster that is a menace to all
life on Earth. A culture of perpetual
growth is both insane and suicidal. We
need to stop destroying ancient cultures.
Every culture that goes extinct removes important knowledge for living
on Earth. Older cultures provide living
proof that there are other ways of thinking and living, and they can inspire us
to search for the long-forgotten wisdom that lies outside the walls. Stable long-lasting cultures are far more
interesting than flash-in-the-pan burnouts.
Imagination gets better mileage than despair or denial.
Davis, Wade, The
Wayfinders — Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World, Anansi
Press, Toronto, 2009.
YouTube has several videos of Davis talking about The Wayfinders.
2 comments:
"Social Darwinists typically imagine a hierarchy of cultures, with industrial civilization at the gleaming pinnacle."
And they're right. What they haven't figured out, though, is that the pinnacle is the least important and most expendable part of the pyramid, while the broad and diverse foundation is what holds the whole thing up.
Ha! Ha! Yeah, the least important, most expendable, and the most destructive.
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